A Stellar Monument To Loneliness
by windfalling
Summary: Happiness, to Sonomi, was not marriage with a man ten years their senior, or having a little boy a few years out of high school, or Fujitaka, or dwindling phone calls and friendship.


**notes.** took extensive liberties with the characters. headcanon abound. title from dashboard confessional.

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><p><strong>A STELLAR MONUMENT TO LONELINESS<strong>

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><p><strong>BEFORE<strong>

"What do you see in him, anyway?"

Nadeshiko, eyes wide, starts at the abrupt question. Sonomi glances up, casually reaching over for a pencil.

"That new guy," she clarifies, "the teacher. The one you fell on top of last week."

"Oh." Nadeshiko, with all her grace and composure, blooms red and loses any semblance of articulacy. "I, um—it's not like that. I mean. It's—it's really not. He's—he's a teacher, you know?"

She does. Sonomi also knows that he calls her _angel_ and means it every time, that he talks to Nadeshiko more than any other student, that he looks at her in a certain way that he doesn't with anyone else.

"Right," Sonomi says, and casts her eyes out the window so she doesn't have to watch Nadeshiko lie to her.

* * *

><p>It isn't like she's jealous or anything like that. It's the simple fact that Nadeshiko is lying to her and it <em>hurts<em>.

Sometimes, Sonomi thinks about kissing her. She imagines what it would be like, how it would feel, how she would react. Maybe Nadeshiko would say her name as Sonomi kissed her. _Sonomi_, all breathless, hands at her shoulders, pushing lightly. She would push back, fingers at Nadeshiko's waist.

Maybe Nadeshiko would push her away entirely.

Sonomi pushes both images away and bites her lip. She doesn't think about it a _lot_, just a little, and she tries not to, anyway. It doesn't matter. It makes sense, she reasons, to question things about yourself. She thinks, with a kind of desperation around the thought, _it'll_ _go_ _away_.

This, too, will pass.

* * *

><p>"I just want you to be honest with me," Sonomi says later, arms folded. A small part of her laughs at her demand and calls her a hypocrite. "You know you can trust me with anything."<p>

Nadeshiko opens her mouth to speak but claps a hand to it instead, and suddenly she's crying, blurting out a jumble of words that don't make sense. "I don't know what to do," Nadeshiko says in between gasping breaths, and her shoulders curl inwards, making herself smaller. Sonomi immediately steps nearer and takes her free hand, squeezing it gently as she waits for Nadeshiko to calm. It takes a tremendous amount of control for Sonomi not to shake her shoulders and demand the name of the person who did this to her.

In her incoherency, she says the name _Fujitaka_ multiple times. It takes Sonomi a moment to put the name to the face.

"Kinomoto?" she asks incredulously, and she doesn't even know why she's surprised, but she is. And then, angrily, "What did that asshole do to you?"

Nadeshiko looks at her. Sonomi waits, fingers curled into fists.

"I love him."

* * *

><p>It doesn't go away.<p>

* * *

><p>"All I've ever wanted is for you to be happy," Sonomi tells her once, before Kinomoto, before the wedding, before Sonomi severs all contact with her for years, before her death.<p>

This was true, once. Happiness, to Sonomi, was not marriage with a man ten years their senior, was not having a little boy a few years out of high school, was not Fujitaka, was not dwindling phone calls and friendship.

_You're being selfish, Sonomi._

She knows.

* * *

><p>"I'm not going to your wedding," Sonomi tells her, and there is a tense silence on the other end of the phone.<p>

"You're my best friend," Nadeshiko finally says, voice cracking, and Sonomi can pretend that it's only because of the connection.

Sonomi hangs up.

* * *

><p>When Fujitaka shows up on her doorstep, Sonomi doesn't know what to think.<p>

"Please don't slam the door on me, Amamiya," he says quietly, and she does exactly that.

The second time he knocks, she cracks open the door and snaps, "What do you want?"

For the first time, she notices what he's carrying: a chess board. "If I recall correctly," he muses, "you were quite good. The best in our school, in fact."

Sonomi eyes it with reasonable wariness. He would not come just to play chess with her, least of all that, and the only possible reason he would see her is—

"If I win," he says, "consider coming to the wedding."

Her fingers tighten around the doorknob. "And if I win?"

"I'll call it off."

Her eyes snap open wide. Fujitaka stares at her evenly, no longer smiling.

"You would bet your marriage on a chess game? Does she mean that little to you?"

He does not answer, but he does step closer. He knows that she has never been able to turn down a challenge, and he has always been able to draw out her competitive side without failure.

Sonomi opens the door.

* * *

><p>She loses.<p>

* * *

><p>She goes to the wedding, not because she lost, or because of Fujitaka, or because she wants to. Sonomi goes for Nadeshiko, to see her lips break into a smile, to see her laugh, to see <em>her<em>, because at the end of everything Sonomi still loves her; this trumps everything, including her own selfishness.

Sonomi wears her best dress and smiles for the pictures. She is the maid of honour, and she gives her speech with the utmost sincerity. At the end of the wedding, Sonomi has to look away, and she pauses before clapping.

At the reception, she dances with Nadeshiko first, then Fujitaka. He holds her hand cautiously throughout, and Sonomi's mind flashes to white skin, smooth under her fingertips. She thinks of Nadeshiko at age seven, nine, eleven, with her long hair plaited into a single braid that falls down to her hips. Sixteen with her hair loose, curled around her waist, then lifted up as she walks down the aisle in her wedding dress, beautiful and radiant as always.

Then Fujitaka goes to dance with Nadeshiko again, his wife, and Sonomi swallows the bitterness in her throat before turning away.

* * *

><p>"I've known for a while," Nadeshiko says, then falls silent, unspoken words held back behind her lips.<p>

Sonomi never hears the rest.

* * *

><p>After a year, Nadeshiko moves away.<p>

There are eleven messages on Sonomi's answering machine.

She presses _delete_.


End file.
